US President Donald J. Trump participates in a Congressional Gold Medal Ceremony in honor of former Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole in the Rotunda of the US Capitol in Washington, DC, USA, Jan. 17, 2018. EPA-EFE/SHAWN THEW

The president of the United States announced Wednesday the winners of the fake news award for 2017, with the top award going to a New York Times article.

The article by renowned economist Paul Krugman, which won two awards, about the adverse fall outs of Donald Trump's win in the US presidential election topped the controversial list.

On Wednesday, Trump tweeted, "And the FAKE NEWS winners are...", along with a link to the Republican National Convention website with a list of ten winners.

The second winner on the list was ABC, for a news piece - that it later retracted - in which it claimed that the controversial former National Security Adviser of the White House, Michael Flynn, was asked by the president to establish contact with Kremlin.

The third winner was CNN news - which received four of the 10 awards - for a news article where it claimed Trump and his son, Donald Trump Jr., had exclusive access to hacked documents from Wikileaks.

The Washington Post, TIME Magazine, Newsweek and ABC news also got an award each.

Republican senators, John McCain and Jeff Flake, on Wednesday harshly criticized Trump for the awards.

"No longer can we compound attacks on truth with our silent acquiescence. No longer can we turn a blind eye or a deaf ear to these assaults on our institutions," said Flake.

Earlier in the month, several experts had also warned that the announcement of these awards could violate federal standards of government ethics, and would embarrass officials, who collaborated with Trump, although not the president himself.

Trump had proposed for the first time in late November, the idea of granting a "fake news trophy" to the television network that was "the most dishonest, corrupt and/or distorted in its political coverage" of his presidency, according to a tweet on Nov. 27.

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